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Monday, August 17, 2015

Movie Monthly - Last Man on Earth

Edited by Robert Beach

In 1954, titan of science fiction Richard Matheson redefined
the zombie/apocalypse genre with his horror novel I Am Legend.Even to
this day, I Am Legend stands as one of
the best examples of both zombie storytelling and post-apocalyptic
imagination.Given the impact the
novel’s had, it makes sense that it’d see a film adaptation.Most people are probably familiar with
the 2007 Will Smith adaptation of the same name.

Despite the gloss and glamour surrounding that film, it’s
actually not very representative of Matheson’s novel; it’s also not the only
adaptation of the story.Previously, there was Omega Man,
a 1971 film starring Charlton Heston as part of his post-apocalypse trilogy
(alongside Soylent Green and Planet of the Apes.)However, the first adaptation of
Matheson’s novel was the 1964 Italian horror film The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price, and it is
incredible.

The Last Man on Earth
is an amazing film. It's a triumph of the genre and easily Vincent Price’s best work
as actor to say nothing of the best adaptation of Matheson’s original
story.Part of that is owed to
Matheson himself co-writing the film under the name Logan Swanson.The plot is pretty standard: at some
point in the future, a deadly plague has struck humanity.The plague turns people into what I
like to call "Zompires."They abide
by the general rules of vampires: repelled by crosses or garlic while a stake
through the heart or sunlight will kill them.Where they differ is that the zompires shuffle around in an
almost mindless state like classic, Night
of the Living Dead zombies.

Vincent Price plays Dr. Robert Morgan, a virologist who was working on
the disease before it wiped out all of humanity but him as he possessed a
sort of natural immunity.With all
of humanity gone, including Morgan’s wife and child, he now stalks the
wasteland, hunting street by street to kill off the remaining living dead. What works so well about The
Last Man on Earth over the other adaptations of Matheson’s work is that it
really gets how terrifying and shattering it would be to be the last man on
Earth.

In stuff like I Am Legend and even Omega Man to a degree the end of the
world always brings with it an element of enjoyment.Will Smith may be alone in I Am Legend, but he spends his whole day fighting inhuman monsters
and hanging out with his dog.The
same way Charlton Heston’s engaged in a downright war with his albino, mutant
horde.There’s something to
legitimately struggle against and a sense of hope to go with it.They’re sci-fi action films with horror
elements more than anything else.

Last Man on Earth
keeps the emphasis on what Morgan’s life is really like in the
post apocalypse.We see his
routine of scavenging food, disposing corpses, shoring up defenses; there’s no
glamour to his life.Even when he’s
killing the zompires in the daylight, it’s an oppressive sequence.The creatures are so uncoordinated that
they offer little resistance when cornered by him, they’re more like frightened
animals he’s putting down.There’s
also the added twist in Last Man on
Earth: the monsters look just like people.So much of the disconnect that’s afforded through the
monstrous designs in Omega Man or I Am Legend is wiped away here,
especially with how many of the zompires used to be Price’s friends and
colleagues.

We also get a greater sense of contrast in Morgan’s
character.Through flashbacks, we
see how he was once a family man and a doctor before being turned into a
hardened killer by the post-plague world.What really works here is Vincent Price’s acting as he manages to keep the
wasteland version of Morgan from ever feeling truly evil and more
detached.You get the sense he’s
lived so long in this hideous broken reality that he no longer recognizes
anything from the world before.There’s a chilling stand out scene where Price identifies one of the key
zompires as his best friend before the world ended. Now that he’s become the
undead, Price will just kill him without a second thought.It’s such a matter of fact statement
without even the slightest hint of doubt, it really highlights what a
conscienceless killer Price has become.

Another major element that adds to the film’s moody and
contemplative atmosphere is the incredible cinematography and visuals.Though Last Man on Earth was made in the ‘60s, it was shot in black and
white, similarly to Night of the Living
Dead.The black and white
lends the whole film this incredibly dark atmosphere and makes abandoned
cityscape all the more isolated and eerie.It also helps that the film was shot in Rome, so the city
already had a strange, otherworldly feel to it that the black and white
extenuates.What really ties it
all together is the incredibly cinematography from Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney
Salkow.A sense of foreboding and
inevitably is draped over the entire story, especially during the flashback
sequences that allow us to see Dr. Morgan’s world prior to the plague.There’s a creepy naturalism to
the plague as if it’s a force of human extinction beyond the touch of science.It really highlights how small and
hopeless man can be against the deadliness of nature, a concept Matheson would
later explore in The Shrinking Man.

Another major element that sets Last Man on Earth apart from the other film adaptations is its
realization of the ending.It’s
eventually revealed that the people Dr. Morgan perceives as monsters are
actually sentient with their own civilization and culture.The whole time he’s been hunting them
he’s become something of a monstrous legend; this insane madman stalking
through the city and killing them in their beds.It’s a dynamite revelation that works so well because of how
much the film had already worked to develop Morgan as a man who’d become a
hardened killer.Last Man on Earth is the only film to
really grasp the post-human vibe of the original story and tap into the
central thesis of Matheson’s work.It’s a story that questions not only our own personal sense of purpose
but also the place of humanity in the world and whether or not we really
deserve to exist.It challenges
our accepted standing as lords of the Earth. In that, Last Man on Earth suggests humanity’s
insistence on its own self-importance is what truly creates monsters.